The CRS is a Congressional "think tank" with a staff of around 700. Reports are commissioned by members of Congress on topics relevant to current political events. Despite CRS costs to the tax payer of over $100M a year, its electronic archives are, as a matter of policy, not made available to the public.

Individual members of Congress will release specific CRS reports if they believe it to assist them politically, but CRS archives as a whole are firewalled from public access.

This report was obtained by Wikileaks staff from CRS computers accessible only from Congressional offices.

Author(s): Blas Nunez-Neto and Alison Siskin, Domestic Social Policy Division; and Stephen Vina, American Law Division

Date: June 20, 2006

Abstract

Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) apprehended along the Southwest border by the USBP between official POE cannot be returned to Mexico because Mexico will not accept them. Instead, they must be returned to their countries of origin, or third countries that will accept them, by the Office of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, DRO does not have enough detention beds to accommodate every OTM that is apprehended. As a result of this, the majority of OTMs apprehended by the USBP in FY2005 were released into the interior of the United States with notices to appear before an immigration judge. Most of these released OTMs fail to show up for their hearings and are not ultimately removed. In order to address the increasing number of OTMs being apprehended and circumvent the regular removal process, the USBP is currently expanding its Expedited Removal (ER) program across the entire southwest border. Issues for Congress include the potential for terrorist infiltration, the current lack of detention bed-space that has led to OTMs being released into the interior of the country, whether the expansion of the ER program will succeed with the current levels of detention bedspace, and how best to deploy DHS resources to address the growing number of OTMs entering into the country illegally.